
Twitter’s added one other aspect to its Twitter Blue subscription package deal, with Blue members now in a position to write tweets up to 10,000 characters long, whereas they’ll additionally make the most of textual content formatting choices, like daring and italics, offering extra inventive alternatives.
We’re improving the writing and studying expertise on Twitter! Beginning in the present day, Twitter now helps Tweets as much as 10,000 characters in size, with daring and italic textual content formatting.
Join Twitter Blue to entry these new options, and apply to allow…
— Twitter Write (@TwitterWrite) April 14, 2023
Which is cool, I assume. I imply, I’m undecided that anybody truly desires to learn a 10k character tweet, however good to have the choice. I assume.
Twitter Blue subscribers may already put up tweets up to 4k characters in length, offering expanded alternative to share extra in-depth posts. However even these are slightly annoying, with the tweets reduce off after the primary 280 characters in-stream. You then need to faucet via to learn the remainder, which feels considerably counter-intuitive for Twitter and its conventional UI.
However perhaps it simply takes some getting used to – in any occasion, Twitter chief Elon Musk appears satisfied {that a} key barrier to folks posting longer content material within the app is the present size restrictions, and that by eradicating them, and increasing what’s doable, that may see extra customers sharing extra of their authentic content material to the platform direct, versus linking folks off to their WordPress web site, or YouTube within the case of video uploads.
Which is one other aspect of Twitter Blue, with subscribers additionally able to post videos up to 60 minutes long, however it stays to be seen whether or not customers actually wish to lean again and watch an hour lengthy clip within the tweet feed.
Does it actually matter to creators whether or not they have so as to add a YouTube hyperlink? Proper now, in all probability not, however then once more, perhaps, as Twitter continues to construct out its monetization instruments for customers, that’ll turn out to be an even bigger consideration, as folks look to monetize their longer movies within the app.
Musk has additionally pledged to supply higher income share than YouTube, if doable, and I assume, in principle, if every thing had been to go proper, Twitter may turn out to be an expanded content material hub, which might see extra authentic materials posted to the app, and extra customers coming to Twitter, extra usually, to devour it.
However I don’t know – for context, at this level proper now, on this article that you simply’re studying, I’m simply now closing in on 2,000 characters. Do you actually need double, or 4x this quantity of textual content jammed right into a single tweet?
Twitter has, in fact, tried longer kind textual content earlier than, with its Notes platform that it rolled out final 12 months.
As you possibly can see on this overview, with Notes, you entered your longer textual content right into a devoted, blogging-style window, with customers in a position to embrace as much as 2,500 phrases per put up, together with photographs, embedded tweets and extra.
That looks as if a greater format for long-form content material – however Twitter ended the Notes experiment shortly after Musk took over in October final 12 months, with this new variation as a substitute simply making common tweets even longer, with what is going to find yourself being huge partitions of textual content that spool out from a ‘present extra’ immediate.
Although there are seemingly a variety of customers which can be experimenting with longer tweets at current, so there might be some case for them. However then once more, these customers are in all probability seeing good response to their longer tweets as a result of extra persons are participating with them – as a result of the one technique to learn the remainder of the tweet is to click on on it, which then results in better-than-normal interplay charges.
That’s in all probability deceptive, in a metric sense, however perhaps not, and perhaps there’s a demand for ridiculously lengthy tweets that I simply don’t see, together with the expanded monetization potential for longer content material.
As a result of, in fact, with longer content material, video or textual content, Twitter also can insert extra advertisements, and that may very well be key to Musk’s broader plans for creator income share, in allocating a proportion of any advertisements proven in long-form posts with the creators of them. Musk has promised to implement an advert income share system based mostly on tweets, although he hasn’t truly performed it as but, and perhaps, that is the place he’s headed with longer uploads, constructing in additional capability to pay creators for his or her content material.
However it simply feels slightly misplaced. At this level, this text is now as much as 4k characters, areas included, which gives some extra context on how a lot you would truly slot in a 10k character tweet.
The textual content formatting choices, in the meantime, have been in improvement for some time, and will add one thing new to the Twitter expertise.
Although it’s probably not new, as Twitter already supports Unicode functionality, which signifies that you’ve all the time been in a position to make use of textual content formatting choices in tweets, should you actually wished.
It’s simply not native, or intuitive – and perhaps, by including them into the composer, that’ll get extra folks dressing up their tweets with totally different textual content shows.
However it’s a bit wealthy that Twitter’s asking you to pay for these options. Like, you get the good thing about giving us extra of your authentic content material, for the low, low worth of $8 per thirty days, and if you wish to monetize longer kind content material – i.e. generate income from Twitter – it’s important to pay for the privilege. Which isn’t actually how that equation is meant to work, however that’s the place we’re at.
And once more, for context, this text is now round 5k characters lengthy, areas included. Twitter Blue customers will now have the ability to put up a single tweet that’s double this size.
Is that what folks need? We’ll discover out.